


Restless by Night

by Liberalia



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Additional Tags to Be Added, Beauty and the Beast AU, Eldritch! Doctor, F/M, The Doctor is the Beast, The Fam (in a minor role), The Master did not sign up for this, Time Lord Telepathy (Doctor Who), canon-typical science magic, no beta we die like time lords, set in canon 'verse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:39:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27640129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liberalia/pseuds/Liberalia
Summary: It was - wrong. Wrong in a way anything but a Time Lord would struggle to see. Like a hole in the universe; a hole in time. A too-long timeline, twisted and snarled and warped back on itself in a hideous tangle, until it hovered between the crushing press of a fixed point and the sickening twist of a paradox. (A supernova well on its way to becoming a black hole.)“Will you sleep with me?” It asked.The Master stared at the…thing at the other end of the room, momentarily too astonished to think of a suitably unpleasant remark.“Come again?” He asked, unable to restrain a laugh at the unfortunate phrasing.Or: Beauty and the Beast, Doctor Who style.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 32





	1. Magnificent spectacle

**Author's Note:**

> I have absolutely no explanation for this, save that I was rereading the original de Villeneuve Beauty and the Beast, and the idea of the Doctor as that version of the Beast would not leave me alone. 
> 
> The rating may rise to E later - I'm still thrashing things out.
> 
> Fic and chapter titles come from the Ernest Dowson translation of Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve’s La Belle et la Bête.

##### In which the Master takes a wrong turning

A few months out from Gallifrey, The Master found the portal - entirely by accident.

He crested a rise in the ground and there it was, hanging in the air rippling quietly to itself, showing an entirely incongruous landscape beyond.

Interesting enough for him to unwisely decide to investigate it rather than carrying on to the city below and its soon-to-be-unfortunate populace.

Curiosity didn’t rule him to the extent that it would push him to wander through without checking. Parking his Tardis close by, he performed various tests: Breathable air? Yes. Survivable gravity? Yes. Did things that passed through it return undamaged? Yes. Where did it lead? Inconclusive. Part of this universe? …Unclear.

Fascinating. But after several days of study he had reached the limits of what he could find out without going through himself. He would have to decide whether to venture further, or to give the thing up. The sensible thing would be to carry on with what he had planned, and write this off as an interesting but mysterious event. But his interest was caught, and he made the wrong choice.

The problems started immediately.

When he tried to get his Tardis through it, he ended up landing on one side or the other, without actually passing through it. Attempting to materialise on top of it had the same effect. (Perhaps something to do with the fact that it only appeared if you were close to it?) Clearly if he was going to go through, he had to do it in person.

The Master weighed his options, watching the purple-tinged air ripple, the alien landscape deforming slowly. There was something in the far distance: village or castle, he couldn’t tell, but definitely artificial. He sighed in exasperation, set his Tardis to hold the thing open while he investigated further, and went to find a rope.

* * *

Actually traveling through the portal proved surprisingly disorientating. The Master staggered, yelping, his feet hitting the ground at an unexpected angle. Breathing in slowly, he tasted the warm, unmoving air, and began to move forward over the sickly-looking brown-red grass, feeling the comforting pull of the rope clipped to his Tardis reeling out.

By the time he had gone far enough that he was getting bored and the rope was beginning to tug a little he realised:

  1. He had miscalculated the distance to the structure - it must be far larger than he had thought;
  2. he should’ve brought transport; and
  3. something about the time here was truly bizarre, though not any of the things he had thought to check



He bent to sample some of the - dying, he now realised - grass before he returned to his Tardis to better plan his next excursion…and felt the rope go slack, dropping limply against his leg.

The Master looked back at empty air and swore extravagantly and furiously, in the way only really possible when you realise you have made an obvious and avoidable mistake.

When he had finished, he glanced around the featureless grassy wilderness to see if anything had changed (still featureless), and grimly walked back to check the area where the portal had been.

Absolutely no traces of it remained. Not so much as a mark in the grass or a strange energy signal. He kept looking for a while anyway, out of pure stubbornness. When this proved fruitless, he set off for the only landmark visible.

The Master hoped that the inhabitants, (if any) had an easy way out - or were at least entertaining to kill.

Without the portal, the wrongnesses of this place became more obvious: though breathable, the air was stale; the time sludgy and odd-tasting; the horizon proving oddly attenuated as he moved further in. He became steadily more convinced that wherever he had ended up, it was extremely small, and fervently hoped the available air wasn’t going to be used up by him breathing it.

Suffocating to death because he couldn’t control his curiosity and had been too overconfident to bring the right equipment might well be an appropriate death, but certainly an inglorious one.

The closer he got to that distant structure, the more clearly wrong the outlines became - warped and twisted, bulging out at random, largely disdaining the grasp of gravity. It looked grown, not built, weirdly organic, sickening in a way he found hard to place.

It reminded the Master of something; raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

Between the odd effect this place was having on him, the persistent awareness of his own foolishness, and the extremely long way he’d had to walk, by the time the Master finally arrived at the (castle? building?) structure, he was in an intensely bad mood, temper having worked on rather than off with the forced exercise.

The thing loomed over him, blocking out the sky. Slightly out of breath, he leant on the - door? probably? - that _looked_ like a handle, and examined it. It was labelled in strange, warped letters (each one as large as his hand), declaring: ‘Push To O’ in writing so shaky that he could tell his Tardis was struggling to translate it, their bond thinned as if by great distance.

Was he in another universe?

Despite this legend, the door eventually proved to open outwards (after considerable force had been applied), the shrieking of rusted hinges and the juddering scrape of the oversized door on the ground doing nothing to improve his temper.

Inside, the Master saw a hallway that was perfectly normal, save for being completely filthy. It looked like no-one had so much as passed through in centuries (if not millennia), let alone bothered to clean.

Finding inhabitants with an escape route he could use was looking less and less likely.

At the end of the corridor, he found a light well, lined with windows marching upwards - or what should have been one, if the skylight at the top had been kept clear. Even so, there was enough light getting in for him to realise that the ceiling was much too far away. The building he’d entered had been very large - but not so high he’d had to squint to see the top of it.

Dimensionally transcendent technology. Clumsily used, and gone badly wrong, leaking out of its confines - which was why looking at it had unsettled him so much. No wonder the place looked abandoned. This could get dangerous, quickly.

At least that put the chances of finding something he could use to get himself out up considerably. A civilisation that had mastered dimensional warping would have access to reasonably useful technology.

After what the Master thought was another day ( _what_ was wrong with the time in this place? It was giving him a headache) spent searching dirty, run-down, sometimes entirely unlit rooms, he became convinced that he was going in circles.

Without seeing any of the same rooms again, mind you, or finding anything useful. Just empty room after empty room, sometimes with some rotting furniture, sometimes without.

And, at last, he realised what was wrong with the building.

It wasn’t just any dimensional technology - this was a Tardis. Monstrously misshapen and overgrown; bulging far out of its proper size, but - a Tardis, nonetheless. He hadn’t even known this was possible - the dimensional warping that underpinned them shouldn’t survive if it burst the outer shell. It should have exploded, collapsed...  


The Master laid a hand on the wall, groping for the psychic controls that were standard issue in all Tardises, only to receive an electric shock for his trouble. Shaking his tingling hand out irritably, he told it, “Fine. Keep your secrets.”

The walls and floor vibrated in response, a disturbing groan rumbling through him.

Unsettling. Perhaps he should try and leave while he still could. There had been a window that opened onto the grassy plain a few rooms ago.

Looking over his shoulder, the Master saw a featureless wall about three inches from his back, where before there had been a corridor.

Ah. Of course the way back had disappeared. It was all of a piece. The absurd thought that it might be trying to eat him appeared at the back of his mind, and he dismissed it. His body contained nothing that would nourish a Tardis.

No way out but through. Eventually he should come across a way to either force an exit or control the Tardis - not that that would be much help. There was no way this thing would be able to even enter the Vortex, let alone escape a pocket dimension.

The Master hoped this was only a pocket dimension.

The next door he opened lead him into a barren approximation of a great hall, of the sort used by the wealthy, royalty, and Time Lords to intimidate visitors. It had the size, but no decoration, and the grand staircase that had clearly once occupied the other end appeared to have been melted into uselessness, the marble flowing into odd shapes. It was empty, but unlike the rooms he had been through so far, had an air of having had occupants recently.

Or at least that was what the footprints in the dust suggested.

He trudged across the room, coughing occasionally from the dust his feet disturbed, until he reached the pathways worn into the filth. He picked the freshest, which led to a small carven half-door in the shadow of what had once been the staircase.

The Master hoped the inhabitants had something he would be able to eat - he had brought water, but no food, and was starting to feel the lack.

Ducking through it, he found himself in a large, L-shaped room, much better lit than the rooms he had passed through, if no less decayed. Glancing down, he discovered the clear trail ended abruptly under his feet, with uninterrupted dust covering the whole of the room.

Turning, the Master was gloomily unsurprised to find that the open door behind him had once again disappeared.

He was clearly being herded, though whether because of a Tardis long-abandoned and run mad, or the whims of its pilot, was as yet uncertain. Either way, he was tired of it. The next time he found a room with somewhere to sit, he was doing so. Wait for them to do something, rather than being chased about.

Thinking this, the Master followed the wall - pale metal, with deep, erratic gouges at about chest hight every few feet - around a corner to find an incongruously large and fine dining table groaning with food, with two place settings of very fine china, one at either end. The one nearer him had a chair; the other did not. There were no marks in the dirt around the table, and, upon further inspection, no doors leading out of the room.

Here was the trap, then. Would a different lure have been provided if he hadn’t thought about being hungry? He leant against the wall and folded his arms, fully prepared to wait them out.

* * *

Two days later, after he had tested the food for poison (none, or at least none detectable with the equipment he had with him), thoroughly inspected the chair and the floor under it for pressure triggers, trapdoors, hidden wiring, and explosives, and checked every surface for an exit this damnable Tardis would allow him to access, the Master remembered that it was a lot easier to wait people out when you were the one who had the upper hand.

The Master was hungry, getting tired, and - on a more shallow note - extremely reluctant to sit on the filthy floor and ruin his suit.

No-one had come, whether to check on him or to replace the food, which nevertheless stayed fresh under a temporal stasis. Nothing in the room changed.

Eventually he gave in, and deciding that it would be better to spring the trap and get it over with, he sat in the chair. Disappointingly after all that build up, nothing happened. After tapping his fingers against the table impatiently for another half hour, he served himself some food.

After it had gone cold, he tasted it.

He had already caused himself considerable trouble by taking risks without the proper precautions; no need to repeat the mistake so quickly. After another tiresome wait to see if he suffered any ill-effects, the Master began to eat in earnest.

It would, he thought, have been good hot.

Clearly he had been mistaken, and this was more of a holding cell than a trap. He eyed the gouges in the wall across from him through the faint haze of the stasis field as he cleared his plate. Escape attempts on the part of previous victims? If so, they seemed rather incompetent.

Alternatively, something large, strong, and armed with something sharp about the size of an ice-pick had been going around assaulting the walls, which wasn’t really a preferable thought. He reached out for an interesting-looking dish, deciding to make a good meal of it at least.

The air at the other end of the table flashed and snapped abruptly, making the Master drop his fork and lurch to his feet, raising his TCE in readiness.

The thing that appeared then nearly made him shut his eyes to avoid having to see any more of it - if the thought of not knowing exactly where it was hadn’t been far worse. The Master stumbled backwards, the chair tangling his legs for an awful moment. He needed to get away - _now._


	2. The sight of the Beast

##### In which poor first impressions are made

It was - _wrong._ Wrong in a way anything but a Time Lord would struggle to see. Like a hole in the universe - no, a hole in _time._ A too-long timeline, twisted and snarled and warped back on itself in a hideous tangle, until it hovered between the crushing press of a fixed point and the sick twist of a paradox. (A supernova well on its way to becoming a black hole.)  


It overwhelmed his temporal senses to the degree that he was left with odd, unconnected impressions, all unpleasant: the taste of a powerful light after total darkness, the visual equivalent of a fire alarm, the sensation of burning plastic, the sound of a drawing pin underfoot.

He had the horrible feeling that he was going to be sucked into it, devoured in some way.

Back hitting the wall with a solid metallic clonk, the Master thought urgently about doors and the lack thereof as pain crawled up from behind his eyes to conquer much of his forehead.

He used the TCE, more out of a fervent desire to stop having to perceive the thing than to kill it. Nothing. He tried again, steadying his shaking hands and shifting his aim slightly, trying to hit what he thought was the central mass.

Naturally, it had no effect whatsoever. Whatever horror this was, it seemed barely present in this layer of reality.

“Hello!” The horror exclaimed in what was (probably) a bright and cheery - though heavily distorted - voice.

“Sorry for startling you! I know I’m not very reassuring to look at, but I won’t hurt you.”

The Master had no attention to spare for this inane greeting.

How did it even _survive_ with a timeline like that? It should collapse under the weight, erase itself from existence - no, there! He glimpsed a straight, clear line amidst the writhing chaos. Perhaps the warped timeline didn’t actually belong to it? That certainly looked like more time than should belong to anything short of an Eternal - and they did not possess timelines as such. How a foreign timeline might end up stuck to something, though…

The thing tried again. “Don’t be afraid-”

The insult succeeded in distracting him where the apology hadn’t.

“I’m not afraid!” The Master snapped.

“Why did you run away then?”

The creature’s tone was hard to read due to the odd voice, but that felt like mockery, and accordingly he went on the attack.

“What _are_ you?” He asked, loading his voice with as much offence as he could.

Not the most rational response, perhaps, to antagonise something he’d just proved he couldn’t easily kill. But the pain in his head was swiftly curdling the terror burning through him into rage, and his every instinct revolted against trying to negotiate with or placate it.

“You can call me the Beast.” The thing declared, voice roughening slightly. In irritation?

“How dramatic. I asked what you were, not what you were called.”

The creature made an odd whistling moan, like strong wind around a building, and asked, “What’s your name?”

“None of your business.”

Realising he was still pointing the TCE at it, he returned it to his pocket.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.” An impressively bad lie on his part, that. The abomination’s dizzying writhing sped up, disturbance coming off it in rapid waves, rolling sickeningly through the strange temporal fabric of this place.

“What were you trying to do? Kill me?” He could’ve sworn it sounded amused. Then its voice harshened again. “Rude, considering you’re my guest here.”

He squinted, trying to suppress the shrieking of his senses long enough to get a look at the physical form of the creature before him - and failed miserably. Smears of light swam through his vision. Unfortunately, he was sure that they were a result of overload rather than a manifestation of the creature.

The TCE hadn’t worked, so no physical body? Or just a very small or diffuse one that he had missed?

Right, yes, it had said something.

“I would rather say prisoner. Why did you trap me in here?”

“I didn’t-“ It cut itself off abruptly, hesitating. If an abomination against the laws of Time and Space could be said to look awkward, it achieved it. Somehow.

…And he was clearly more tired than he had realised, to think something that ridiculous.

After a moment of silence he reached out psychically, trying to get a read on the thing - only to be brutally rebuffed. The blow hit with such force it sent fine cracks splintering through his shields, and left his head ringing, vision blurring further.A small, pained sound slid through his teeth.

That had been careless. Whatever it was, it was at least as strong as he was.

Next time, he would take precautions.

“That’s why-! The strange voice harshened further, growing almost incomprehensible. “I should have known! - never mind. There’s something I have to-” The voice faded into the distance, a harsh rumble like thunder overhead.

_Don’t fall down, don’t fall down, never show weakness before the enemy…_

He leant heavily against the slick metal to keep himself upright, one of the gouges in the wall digging sharply into his back, and did his best to pay attention to the twisting monstrosity in front of him.

It seemed to be muttering to itself, voice so distorted he could barely understand it.

Or maybe that was the ringing in his ears.

“No, no, not yet! I’ve got to-“ It made an odd, choking sound, and coiled in a preparatory way before going still, that awful writhing stopping at last. No longer distorting the fabric of Time itself. The pain eased a little, his head clearing slightly.

“Will you sleep with me?” It asked, voice much clearer but - wooden, somehow.

The Master stared at the…thing at the other end of the room, momentarily too astonished to think of a suitably unpleasant remark.

“Come again?” He asked, and was unable to restrain a laugh at the unfortunate phrasing. The creature lashed around dizzyingly, though whether in anger, confusion, or simple discomfort, he couldn’t tell.

 _“Will you sleep with me?”_

Was this a translation issue? A threat? (Who did this creature think it was?) But there was a far more pressing question.

The Master looked its - body? - up and down slowly (inasmuch as that was possible), eyes burning from the effort, and asked, _“How?”_

“Just _answer!”_ The creature snarled, and then appeared to rein itself back in, wooden tone returning. “Yes or no, without fear or favour.”

“No, then.” He hissed. “Shockingly.”

The - Beast, he supposed - vanished. The endless, unnatural churning of Time immediately slowed to a stop, the relief of it so intense he almost slid to the floor.

He waited a few moments to see if it returned, but nothing happened.

Well. At least he could concentrate on his (presumably not poisoned) supper now. Assuming it didn’t come back to murder him in a rage at being - turned down, he supposed. Returning to his seat, he found that the splitting pain that had established itself behind his eyes made eating a struggle, and soon gave in, setting aside his fork.

A metallic sound from the other side of the room drew his attention to the door that had appeared in the far wall. Not the one he had entered through - this was made of pale, worn wood, incongruous in the metal wall. Apparently he was being released.

Perhaps now he had met the - pilot? - thief? - usurper? - the Tardis would be more hospitable. Or - considering how the conversation had gone - the door would prove to lead to an oubliette.

The Beast had said he was its guest, which suggested that it, at least, considered the Tardis to belong to it - though whether the Tardis itself agreed remained to be seen.

What to do now? His migraine had now reached the point where it would be pointless to try to escape again. He would sleep it off, allow his shields and temporal senses time to recover, and then find a way out.

When he rose to his feet, he had to steady himself on the table for a moment, breathing hard as a wave of exhaustion rolled over him. _Had_ he been poisoned? He concentrated on his body. No, just - _‘just’_ \- aftereffects from encountering…whatever that had been. That level of temporal distortion, appearing without warning, the psychic blow - and he had gone too long without rest, even before he came here.

How long _was_ it since he’d slept? Properly slept, not just a scant five minutes of shut-eye caught between the distraction of one plan or another?

Getting to the door took more effort than it should have. Grasping the handle, he thought firmly about a bedroom. A _clean_ bedroom, he corrected hastily, and opened the door.

The Tardis evidently hadn’t been sufficiently mollified, as the door opened into a kitchen (though admittedly a clean one). A grey haired alien was washing up at the sink on the other side of the room. Compared to the Beast he looked gloriously normal and soothing.

The plates on the draining board were far plainer than those in the dining room. Servants’ quarters, perhaps? Though a Tardis shouldn’t need servants. But then a Tardis should also be self-cleaning, take care of the washing-up, and not leak all over the landscape, so he was clearly in strange waters.

Not in the mood to either manage or murder any strangers, he discreetly shut the door, intensified his request for a bedroom and reopened it. And then tried again. Faced with the kitchen twice more, he sighed in defeat and stepped through.

To his left was a large kitchen table with two more aliens playing cards, which they dropped when they saw him, leaping to their feet in evident excitement.

“Gramps, look!”

“Someone new!”

The Master winced, the excited voices cutting through him.

How to make them stop talking? He _really_ wasn’t up to hypnotism right now. Though he could of course threaten them with his TCE. Or kill them. But then they might scream. In his current delicate condition screaming would be unendurable. He collapsed into one of the chairs, resting his head on the table. The terror was finally fading from his body, leaving grinding weariness in its wake.

Perhaps he would die here.

One of them was talking to him, damn them to hell. Be polite, he reminded himself. You might need allies, and definitely need information about - whatever ‘the Beast’ is.

“Are you ill?”

“Yes,” he said, not raising his head. “Who are you?” That sounded suitably non-hateful, didn’t it?

“I’m Yaz, and this is Ryan,” the alien said, and apparently carried on, though whatever else she said was obscured by the ringing in the Master’s ears.

“Sorry,” the Master said, somehow keeping his voice pleasant, “I can’t hear you.”

He turned his head enough to keep an eye on them.

The one called Ryan looked annoyingly sympathetic, exchanging looks and a few indistinguishable words with Yaz, and raised his voice to an audible level.

“Just met the Beast?”

The Master nodded. He needed to ask questions. Lots of questions. In a minute, when he could hear. Or think.

“She can have that effect, the first few times. If you sleep it off, it’s easier.”

The Master nodded.

“I’ll prepare the bed,” the older one said. He was pretty sure he added, “He looks done in, poor chap,” before leaving through the archway at the other end of the room.

He added that comment after the one from earlier about him being _‘so afraid’_ to his list of ‘Things people have said that require eventual retribution.’

It was a surprisingly short list, due to all the retribution, and had recently got a lot shorter. There was, after all, no kill like overkill.

There was some more conversation, which he believed he set aside a tenth of his brains to take some part in. He was mainly conscious of the difficulty in restraining himself from threatening to murder them all - or simply doing it - so they would be quiet, and he could lie down on the nice cold stone floor until he could be sure that his head would remain attached.

It was conveyed to him that the bed had been found, and he was brought nearer the fireplace.

“Sorry, but this is all we’ve got. We’ll help you clean out one of the bedrooms tomorrow,” Yaz said.

He stared at the folding bed in the cubbyhole, reminded himself that he had slept in far less comfort in the past, and dredged up a polite smile for Yaz.

“That looks great, thanks!”

Luckily after he lay down they got the hint and took themselves elsewhere. The sound of the small, banked fire dying down in the great fireplace beside him chinked faintly, sending flickering light across the dark floor.

The bed dug into his back, and his headache had made his hearing sensitive enough that the Master could hear his pulses drumming away in his ears. The tinnitus didn’t drown _that_ out, of course. Brought back lovely memories, that did.

The Master dropped into sleep like a stone despite the discomfort, too drained to care that he was trapped in a dangerously malfunctioning Tardis with three strangers - and an enemy he couldn’t kill somewhere nearby.

Though he would at least wake up if the Beast came for him - that level of temporal distortion would be impossible to ignore.

Despite this comforting thought, he woke with a start many times during the night, hearts pounding and hands shaking. No memory of what his dreams had been about lingered, save for an intense feeling of dread, and something that felt strangely like grief.

Every time, he resolved to stay awake and plan, and every time the mixture of psychic injury and long-ignored exhaustion quickly pulled him under.

It was a long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the original version of La Belle et la Bête, the question the Beast asks Beauty every evening was not ‘will you marry me?’ but ‘will you _sleep _with me?’. It was bowdlerised in almost all English translations/retellings.__
> 
> _  
> _I had to spend far too long thinking about what kind of Beast a Time Lord would find actually off-putting - Eleven’s response to a giant fish-thing was to talk about their potential kids after all…_  
>  _


	3. To satisfy his curiosity

##### In which the Master turns his hand to social engineering

The Master woke to the sound of muted conversation and lay still a moment, taking stock.

Physically, his back hurt from the bed and he was still tired after the disturbed night, his sleep debt not yet paid off.

Psychically, the wound from last night’s blow was knitting together well, the pain now little more than an ache, with no sign of any memory leakage or cognitive looping.

Even so, it would be a few days before he could risk attempting to influence even an untrained mind - so sitting his co-captives down, compelling them to tell him everything they knew, and then wiping their memories was sadly a no-go for now.

Ah, well. There were other ways.

Freshening himself up in the kitchen sink, he mentally prepared to strip as much useful information as possible out of what, now he had his wits about him, he could identify as humans.Very useful creatures, humans, if you could get them onside. Quite, quite ruthless, delightfully gullible, and gloriously easy to split into factions.

“O! You’re up! Did we wake you?” Yaz stood in the kitchen door, smiling cheerfully.

The Master’s face froze for a moment. This was why he tried not to lie while injured: It didn’t so much dry up inspiration as completely vaporise it. ‘O’, for goodness’s sake - not even a pun! (The memory of ‘Push To O‘ flickered briefly at the edge of his mind. He’d seen that sign somewhere before, he was sure of it.)

What _had_ he been thinking.

Probably that considering the creature’s reaction to something as minor as him attempting a little psychic eavesdropping, he’d better keep his name - and species - quiet until he had gained control of the Tardis. A living temporal anomaly probably wouldn’t be thrilled to have a Lord of Time in residence.

Besides, there was a slim chance that the creature could’ve heard of him. He didn’t like being recognised until he was good and ready - it made things tiresome. People throwing him in gaol, mobs with pitchforks, and suchlike. Easily surmountable, but irritating.

He smiled shyly at Yaz. “Yes, but I’d slept enough.”

He looked at her earnestly. “Could you tell me more about this place?”

* * *

The humans, as far as he could remember from last night’s conversation, were Yaz, Ryan and…Graham? Probably?

Luckily, they proved both eager to talk to someone new and trustingly happy to explain as much as they knew about the place. Unfortunately, their information seemed to be a complete fabrication in the rare cases where it wasn’t entirely irrelevant.

Probably-Graham in particular had to be carefully steered away from talking about someone called Grace. (Who had only just avoided being trapped here with them, and she must be so worried, and, and, and-!). _Unbearable._ Ryan, who also seemed to know this Grace (judging by the way Probably-Graham seemed to be saving these emotional outbursts for when he was out of earshot), at least had the taste not to waffle on about it all the time.

Finally, the Master managed to convince them to give a proper explanation of how they ended up here, starting at the beginning. Apparently, they had come through the portal inside this Tardis’s library, which was odd. His own Tardis had refused to interact with it at all.

The degree of similarity in the mistakes they’d made was, admittedly…unflattering.

“Grace had gone back to make sure the ropes were secure before this lot tried going further in, to see if they could get one of the books to show people-“ Probably-Graham was saying, putting a frying pan on the stove.

“-and Gramps saw I was slipping, but Yaz was too far ahead to grab me, so he came through-“ Ryan interjected.

“-and the Boundary just - vanished!” Yaz continued. “So all the ropes snapped-“

“-and then I really did fall down the slope, taking Gramps with me.” Ryan finished.

Annoyingly, it seemed they had even taken similar rope-based precautions to himself. The thought that he had been very nearly as idiotic was as true as it was offensive.

“We tried to go on a little further to find somewhere safe to rest, but it just got worse and worse-“ Probably-Graham/Definitely-Gramps said, pouring oil into the pan.

“-the lights got dimmer and further apart the farther we went, and we couldn’t find our way back-“ Ryan continued.

“-so we ended up trapped in some kind of storage area,” Yaz said. “Graham had hurt himself on the slope, our torches had gone out, and we couldn’t climb up to the next door.”

“It was bloody scary.” Definitely-Graham added, gesturing with a spatula for emphasis. “We were stuck there for hours. These two kept their spirits up like you wouldn’t believe.”

“The Beast said it was lucky we hadn’t wandered into one of the dark areas of the castle, or she might never have found us,” Ryan said.

 _Dark areas?_ The fact that they called the Tardis a castle was interesting. Did they - or the creature - even know that this was a Tardis? Could she access the scanners?

“She seemed scary too at first - but she’s great once you get to know her,” Yaz said earnestly.

He said, unthinking, “Don’t you find it hard to be in the room with her for long?”

They glanced at one another.

“No?” Yaz eventually answered. “Because she looks weird?”

Ah, humans. All obsessed with the way things looked.

“No…” the Master said. What species had he told them he was? Too late to feign temporal deafness. “She gives me a headache - literally. How about you?”

“The Beast said she gives off - temporal radiation, I think?” Ryan said, “And that it can make some people feel ill the first few times they meet her, ’til they get used to it. That’s probably why you were so sick last night. But I’ve never noticed anything.”

What an understatement! But probably true for them. It seemed unlikely they would be as fond of her as they seemed to be if they could perceive her accurately. In his experience humans tended to get violent when faced with things that made them uncomfortable.

Yaz shot Ryan a surprised look. “When’d she tell you that?”

“While we were fixing the heating yesterday.” He answered, and hissed, “I’ll tell you later,” in what he seemed to believe was an inaudible voice.

Yaz nodded and turned back to the Master. “Oh! Don’t touch her, by the way - it feels really weird, and she doesn’t like it.”

“No need to worry,” the Master said wryly, “I don’t think that will be a problem.” If he felt that thing coming for him again, he fully intended to flee for the nearest door and keep going. He’d never been one to stand his ground when he had no chance of winning.

What _did_ the creature look like to their limited run of senses? He hadn’t really paid much attention to what ‘the Beast’ had looked like in the human-visible light spectrum, being far too occupied with how she looked everywhere else. A vague figure of some kind? Between the temporal overload and the psychic trauma, the Master couldn’t remember.

As it turned out, neither could they.

Graham was the worst, frankly admitting that he had no idea. “Just a blur in my head when I try and think of her,” he said.

“Kind of glittery?” Yaz said. Upon disagreement from the other two, she corrected herself. “More - shining, then? Maybe? Person shaped, anyway.”

“Human shaped,” Ryan said, “there’s other kinds of people. And she doesn’t look like that at all - more like a…shadow? Y’know, the way they stretch and change. Things behind or beside her warp sometimes too, when she’s upset. Like she’s pulling them about.” He thought a moment. “It’s one of the only ways you can tell when she gets upset, actually.”

Ryan apparently paid slightly more attention to what was in front of him than the other two. He’d better keep that in mind. Observant people were generally either very useful or a real trial to work around. Combined with Yaz’s evident nosiness (she had asked him more questions than the other two put together), it could cause difficulties.

Further careful digging showed that the Beast had never trapped them in a prison-cum-dining room, nor had they been asked… _impertinent_ questions.

Apart from that, there was a great deal of tiresome ‘the Beast said’-ing, and very little information of any use.

No, they didn’t know where they were, or what the Beast was, or how to leave. They assured him that the Beast was working on it, and would return them home as soon as possible.

They seemed to have complete faith in this, despite the fact that they freely admitted that they had seen absolutely no progress towards this goal.

All-in-all, the conversation had proved disappointing, but not a complete waste of time. The Master could see several fault-lines he could exploit to turn them against the Beast if it proved necessary, though what use that would be was a question. Might provide a bit of entertainment, though.

Most of this discussion had been conducted while Graham cooked breakfast, which was frankly baffling, both to watch and to eat. He might have described it as Rynian-Earth fusion cuisine if he had been trying to outrageously flatter the cook.

In fact, it was Rynian ingredients prepared using twenty-first century Earth techniques - that was to say, they clearly had had no idea what to cook (or how), and what to leave alone. A shame, as most of the ingredients were delicacies.

After he’d eaten as much of the confusing food as he could bear, he announced his intention to explore. This launched a new round of ‘but the Beast said!’-ing, largely about how dangerous going too far into the ‘castle’ was, and that he should keep to the cleaner areas.

Which was very helpful, inasmuch as it told him where to start looking for something useful.

Just as he was leaving, Ryan interrupted him. “O, wait - you can’t go upstairs.”

“Can’t I.” The Master said, patience starting to wear thin.

“No, he means you really can’t - there aren’t any stairs that are safe. The Beast says,” (Not again! The Master thought.) “the upper levels are off-limits.” Yaz explained.

The Master reminded himself that this concern for his wellbeing, though violently irritating right now, might be useful later on, and kept his tone pleasant. “Does that include her? Or is it an everyone-else rule?”

“She says it’s not safe for us,” she answered.

 _Not safe for you, maybe._ The Master, however, firmly intended to have a good poke about, and having reassured Yaz and co. of the opposite, set off to do so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: What would lure relatively sane people through a glowing hole in the world? Giant alien library!
> 
> Naturally, Graham is the cook. Trying to figure out what various foods are (animal, vegetable or mineral? who can say?), if they're actually edible, and how or if to cook them, has been an ongoing and not entirely enjoyable adventure for the fam.
> 
> I'm hoping to post more regularly over the next few weeks, so watch this space!


	4. Fulfilling a duty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas!, if that's a holiday you celebrate. If not, I wish you a very happy Happy Holidays/Friday, depending on your preference! :)

##### In which the Master ascends a staircase

Unfortunately for the Master’s plans, the Tardis (having dragged him all over the shop the cycle before) now seemed grimly determined to restrict him to a small pen that seemed to be designed for the humans.

The Master went round and round the same tedious few rooms in a random order: kitchen, great hall, bathroom, sitting room, utility room - and most often, a hallway with four bedrooms opening off it. The three clean ones clearly belonged to the humans. The filthy one without a bed was presumably intended for him.

Good to know where he stood in the hierarchy.

All the rooms save the great hall were constructed out of the same featureless dark metal: cold, dull, and without ornament, lit by stark white lighting. No attention given to aesthetic. Even the dining room he’d been locked in had been better finished. It was almost like they were an afterthought.

Or part of a prison complex.

No sign of a way out of the Tardis, or one of the mysterious ‘dark areas’. No sign of the humans, either, despite the fact that they had told him this was where they would be unless the Beast came to get them to help with repairs.

The Master was now a little annoyed at himself for not asking what those repairs might be - though they _had_ distracted him by hastily reassuring him that the Beast would avoid him until he ‘settled in’. He did not find the assumption that he was going to be here long enough to settle in particularly reassuring.

Returning to the great hall, the Master looked at the ruined staircase with the gallery high above, and sighed. Well, if there was no other way…

During the slow, difficult climb, he turned over the situation.

The portal or ‘Boundary’, which appeared and disappeared like a magic trick. Did the Beast really plan to use it to send the humans home, or had she used it to lure them (and him) here in the first place, as some sort of work crew? Did it always lead here? Where _was_ here?

The broken-down Tardis, that functioned well enough to trap him in a room clearly designed for the purpose, well-stocked with cooked food - but couldn’t keep itself clean or lit, or provide food for its other residents.

The Master’s foot slipped on the smooth ripples of marble, his stomach dropping sickeningly as he fought to regain his balance. He continued upward, hearts beating fast. The fall wasn’t far enough to kill him unless he was very unlucky, but the thought of the Beast coming upon him while he was injured and couldn’t get away made his skin crawl.

Thinking of the Beast; a creature so unlike any he - he, the great traveller! - had ever seen, a living temporal anomaly of all things! Who had apparently convinced the humans that she was a protector rather than a captor, despite all evidence to the contrary - and who possessed a Tardis.

That thought gave him pause, because he wasn’t sure where it had come from. Tardises were for Time Lords, by and large not deigning to partner themselves with other races.

This one probably hadn’t partnered with the Beast, either. For all he knew, she had in some way consumed or slain the true pilot, and that was why the Tardis was behaving so strangely. Though it had collaborated in herding him into the dining room for that odd interview, as well as resisting his attempts to contact it… And it would be unlikely to aid the Beast if she were an invader…

His musings cut off by reaching the top, the Master dragged himself over the edge, hands slipping on the smooth floor, and sat catching his breath for a moment, studying the small gallery.

It was panelled floor to ceiling in dark wood, at odds with the grim grey metal of the lower level, though similarly uncared-for. Where he’d disturbed the dirt on the floor it shone slickly, clearly well-polished prior to its current neglect. Three doors led off it, their richly carved decorations visible even through the thick layer of dust. The Master chose the third, drawn by its intricate tessellated patterns.

If it opened back into the damn kitchen again, the Master promised himself, he was going to take a hammer and blowtorch to the walls until he either found some wiring he could use to hack the Tardis systems, or another room.

Any room.

It wasn’t the kitchen. Instead, it led to what the Master recognised as one of the central maintenance rooms. The soft thrum of the floor told him he was near the engines, which meant this was an antique model, somewhere in the early forties - maybe even a Type 40, without further improvement. Looking around, the Master winced at the state of it. Most of the vital machinery was cracked open and exposed to dirt and condensation, and there were wires pulled out of the floor and trailing everywhere. Clearly, someone had disabled the self-repair function.

But there was no time to tidy up now. If he recalled the early layouts correctly, one of these doors should lead straight to the console room - and control of the Tardis.

The first door lead to a generator hub. The second door, directly opposite…also lead to a generator hub. The _same_ generator hub.

As, it turned out, did the other five. The Master glared at the open doors in front of him, all impossibly showing precisely the same view of a rusted generator, clearly all opening to the same doorway.

He’d heard this sort of dimensional layering could happen if things on a Tardis really started to break down. It was generally a sign that you should get out quickly before you got ripped in half by a dimensional fluctuation going straight through your body. The Master glanced over his shoulder, checking the door behind him still _(existed)_ lead on to the gallery, and caught a reassuring glimpse of dusty wooden panelling.

Scrubbing a hand through his hair in irritation, the Master shut all the doors - he could feel the itch of Röntgen radiation and smell the reek of rust and leaking coolant from here, and it was distracting - and turned to the maintenance controls. They were limited, but he should be able to do _something_ with them - brute-force a door to the console room, run a scan of the Tardis exterior and get some idea of where it was, get a map of the ship, find any other inhabitants that hadn’t yet turned up.

Of course, every single attempt he made (however minor), brought up: ‘Error: power required for life support’. Getting annoyed, the Master checked the power levels, which _were_ dangerously low. Sighing, he looked back to the doors he’d shut.

The machinery in the generator room was in bad disrepair, like everything else in this rust-bucket. To inspect the corroded wiring on the nearest generator, he had to brush aside enough dust to give him a coughing fit, the sound echoing loudly off the barren metal around him.

Though not quite loudly enough to disguise the faint, familiar click from behind him. The Master froze, before turning in disbelieving rage. The door had disappeared. Again.

“I’m going to start ripping them off their hinges before I go through if you keep this up,” the Master told the listening air, tone deceptively calm. “You can’t keep wasting all this energy in this state.”

There was no response. Judging by what had happened so far, it would just seal up the walls to hold him in anyway, power or no power.

The Master eyed the walls, which were back to reinforced metal, which was at least more congruous to this section of the ship than to a dining room or bedroom. It would take him a very long time to cut or melt through, even if he broke down one of the generators for parts.

A recess in the floor opened next to him, revealing a toolbox, helpfully open. Everything he would need to do pretty much any repair proved to be inside.

“You must be kidding me!” He slammed a half-open panel shut with a bang, rust flaking off the squealing hinges. “What is this - coercion? The Beast’s a bad mechanic?” His voice rang hollowly off the walls.

His theory that they had been brought here to work was seeming more and more likely.

The Master walked around the generators, seething, considering destroying them one by one until the Tardis was forced to let him out. On the other, more rational hand, he was stuck in here and these generators were probably running the breathable atmosphere.

Wait a minute. Someone incompetent had been trying to repair them.

No - that was wrong. The Master peered closer, stepping over a service panel left discarded on the floor. Not incompetent, exactly - it was all correct, everything done that should have been - but not _as_ it should have been. It was - messy, like it had been done by someone (or some _thing)_ with the knowledge and experience, but not the fine motor control required.Whoever it was, they had clearly been working hard (if with little result) to keep the two generators that were still running going. The one in front of him was a mess of barely holding repairs and dripping solder.

It itched at him. Good ideas poorly applied, useful things going to rust and decay. The Master gloried in destruction, but rot was depressing. He could stay here and try and wait it out again; waste another few cycles. Or he could do the work, and probably make his life easier in the bargain. No wonder the Tardis couldn’t keep the place clean or run scans if it was this low on power - and when he got rid of the Beast and took it over, he would need it working properly to return to his own Tardis.

“Fine, then.” The Master knelt in the dust and oil-stains (there were no cloths large enough to kneel on, which either reflected poor stocking or malice), and set to work, sighing at the fate of his suit. It really wasn’t going to be salvageable, even with a Tardis’s superior laundering abilities.

Halfway down the first row, he heard a faint sound, and glanced up to see the door had returned. Rather than leaving at once, the Master returned to his work with renewed vigour. Despite the Tardis’s bullying and his own best intentions, he had found he enjoyed it. Fine-detail, interesting work, moving towards a useful goal. Each generator was damaged slightly differently, and there was a wide collection of different models to puzzle out, so it never got too repetitive.

The damage varied between that caused by age and lack of maintenance and more of the same clumsy attempts at repairs he’d noticed earlier - fragile parts dented or bent past use, solder dripped on vital wiring, wires that didn’t quite connect. In a few cases the generators seemed to have been deliberately smashed, as if beaten with a hammer. Deliberate sabotage or a fit of rage?

He was so engrossed that he almost missed the faint flicker at the other end of the room, the slight feeling of pressure. No sooner than it had arrived, it faded again, leaving him staring suspiciously at empty air until he began to feel rather ridiculous, and stopped.

The work went quickly and easily enough that the Master hardly noticed time passing, focussed entirely on rewiring, refitting, and sometimes remaking the machinery entirely, in the case of one of the smashed ones that was leaking Röntgen radiation. Which at least helped explain why the Beast hadn’t got the humans to do repairs in here, despite how desperately needed they were. He wondered if the Beast had mentioned that they had been two failing generators away from suffocation.

He’d have to remember to drop it into conversation over supper.

When he began to tire of it at last, more than half of the large room thrummed with activity, and he felt the straightforward pleasure of correcting a flaw - as well as of forwarding his own interests.Tucking the various things he had made into his capacious pockets, he added a couple of tools that he had neglected to bring with him.

Concentrating, he forced the Röntgen radiation out of his body and into a grease-rag, and disposed of it in one of the hazardous waste chutes in the maintenance room. He hoped that those, at least, still functioned to some degree.

The Master exited the maintenance room feeling only too pleased with himself, pockets overflowing with useful things. Tomorrow, the power would have built up enough for him to run the scans he’d wanted. Perhaps he would explore the gallery’s other doors.

As the Master searched his pockets for some rope to help him back down the melted staircase, his fingers encountered something unexpected. He pulled it out and rubbed it between his fingers, releasing a crisp, familiar scent. It was the grass from the plain he’d arrived on.

Which might help him work out where he was. Especially as in better lighting it looked disconcertingly familiar. What little analysis he could perform with the equipment he had on him proved troubling. It was lurna, a grass with a naturally short growing habit, often used in lawns.

Gallifreyan lawns, to be more precise. Struck by a sudden suspicion, the Master stuck a few blades into his mouth and chewed. Yes, there it was - the faint tang of Tardis-filtered water. When he had arrived, he hadn’t been outside at all - that must have been one of the internal gardens.

That was why his own Tardis had wanted nothing to do with it, of course. There were numerous safety protocols designed to prevent landing anywhere inside another Tardis except the control room, as unless great care was taken there was a risk of the two ships becoming inextricably fused.

No wonder it had felt so small, so unnatural. The Master remembered seeing what he had assumed was the outside of the Tardis, looming against the sky. The memory gave him pause; he had been so sure he had come in through an external door.

The answer that occurred to him was both disturbing and (thankfully) unlikely, so he set it aside for now. But if he was right, it would mean escaping by finding a Tardis exit was completely impossible. Escaping through the Boundary was another option, if wandering through a randomly appearing tear in reality without knowing where you were going to end up could be _called_ an option…

When he returned to the lower level, the Tardis showed signs of being mollified by the repairs: It produced a door to a bathroom (clearly used by the humans) equipped with soap harsh enough to remove engine grease - and another to one of the the wardrobe rooms. This was less clean, but he was able to find something tolerable to change into.

Pleasantly tired, the Master went in search of food - and instead found what he supposed was ‘his’ bedroom. Still filthy, of course, but now equipped with a clean bed and a wardrobe that had clothes similar to the ones he had chosen. He could recognise a peace offering when he saw it.

The fifth door down the hall of bedrooms now seemed to lead to the kitchen, judging by the clattering and food smells coming from behind it.He heard Ryan’s faint voice: “Hurry up Yaz, tea’s on the table!”

He followed the sound, not paying enough attention to where he was going - and found himself back in the metal dining room, listening to the soft snick of the doorway vanishing behind him. Closing his eyes, the Master breathed out sharply through his nose, struggling to hold on to his temper.

He really was going to have to start taking all the doors off at the hinges.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably would have been more appropriate to post this on Boxing Day, considering all the tidying up the Master's having to do...  
> I've been looking forward to the next chapter for a while, so that should be up soonish!

**Author's Note:**

> I’m still working out some aspects of the plot, so the first few chapters might get adjusted later. It should update every two weeks, more often if I can manage it.
> 
> Here's a link to an English translation of de Villeneuve’s La Belle et la Bête, if you're interested:
> 
> https://archive.org/details/storyofbeautybea00dowsuoft


End file.
